Pain Like Silence
by Trogdor19
Summary: Post 4x19. What would convince Elena that she wants to feel again? A story of the divine nature of history, friendship, and all the possibilities for pain and redemption wrapped up in what it means to love. (No torture!) Elena, Damon, Stefan, Elijah, Katherine. Delena.
1. Sleeping Beauty

_Author's Note: This will be just a few chapters long and posted quickly because even though I have another story going, I couldn't resist the challenge of all the ironies involved in Elena's lost humanity when compared with the histories of her friends. Though it deals with dark subject matter, you shouldn't worry too much, since I don't really believe in writing anything without a happy ending. _

_Huge thanks to Goldnox and Latbfan, the fastest and most insightful beta team of all time._

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**Sleeping Beauty**

**Elena POV**

They laid me out with my dress and hair smoothed around me like Sleeping Beauty, leaving me looking like a girl they never would have had to lock in a basement cell. Optimistic of them. Or insane.

There are four drops of Bonnie's blood marring my stolen gown.

Her blood tasted like liquid poison ivy, cinching my throat closed until I couldn't even cough it up anymore. I wonder if all witch blood tastes like that, or if it is the taste of the triple massacre that feeds her power now.

When I woke up, I was so relieved to be alive, to be able to swallow and breathe and move. But in the next moment, I saw the heavy wood beams and the bars in the door and I knew I'd failed. Despite the near-perfect execution of my prom night plan, my friends didn't let me go. They took me home with them and locked me in.

It's funny, because most of the people we've put in the basement have loved killing too much, and I couldn't care less.

When I killed Connor I liked the sound, just for a second. That clean, crisp snap that said he'd never threaten Jeremy ever again. With the waitress, I didn't even get that much. I just felt tired, because even before she hit the ground I knew the gesture wouldn't be enough.

I knew that by the end of the night I'd be headed back to the same old town with the same old people and I'd never be free of their nagging, or their expectations, or the threat of all of them, pressing in around me all the time and waiting waiting waiting for me to break.

Again.

Even alone in this room, I can feel the weight of them squeezing down on my chest as the witchy fingers gouge outward, pressing me thinner and thinner in between.

I should have seen this coming when I let the Salvatores drive me back to Mystic Falls. Stefan's been dying to lock me in the basement since the moment I completed my transition and after I gave him a taste of his own medicine in New York, I doubt Damon was arguing too loudly.

They must have planned this even while they were buying corsages and shining their good shoes because in my cell, there's a bed. A virtuously twin-sized bed with a good pillow and sheets too white to risk on a dungeon built of bricks that are too rough to ever be clean. Nothing like the cot we gave Stefan, or the bare floor Damon slept on.

I'm probably lucky I didn't wake up with Converse sneakers on my feet and a brand-new diary full of accusingly blank pages tucked into the crook of my arm.

I blow out a long breath and vow to appreciate the quiet, the peace of getting to be exactly who I am when no one is here to hate me for it. Because it's obvious that these moments are going to be few and far between until I talk or cry my way out of this cellar.

I'm okay, no matter what the Salvatores think. The dangerous part of me that loves is buried and I'll never have to attend another funeral or touch another red rose. All I have to do is wait until they let me out, and then I'll be safely alone all of the time.

I'm not sure where I'll go. Beaches don't pique my interest any more than cities, and I don't really care if I go to school now, or get a job.

I'm distracted by a clank and a gurgle as water rushes through the old pipes in the walls. I could never hear that from Damon's room. He must have replaced all the plumbing in his wing of the house so it would run smooth and quiet. But from down here, it sounds like the house is digesting me.

The pipes rattle into an uneasy quiet. I try to think about what I will do when I'm free.

Instead the silence inside of me matches the silence of the heavy old house.

When I hear the basement door open, I arrange myself on my Disney Princess bed, pretending to be asleep so I'm not subjected to another round of earnest pleading to act like my old whiny self again. The footsteps are heavy and hesitating, and I close my eyes and sink back into the pillow as I recognize them.

There's a small scraping sound at the door, and then nothing. He must just be standing there, watching me sleep. Probably fantasizing about the good old days when I followed him around like a puppy and swallowed every lie he fed me like I was starving for them.

I open my eyes because I won't let him make me something I'm not, not even in his fantasies.

"Come back to cop another cheap feel in the name of altruism?" I ask him, my voice too flat to be sarcastic.

"Elena," he says, his green eyes wide. They flick to the right as if he's looking for help that isn't coming. "I didn't expect you to be awake yet."

I laugh, even though it isn't funny. "Aww, you don't have a plan yet, do you? Haven't decided how to deal with poor crazy Elena."

He blinks and lines appear at the edges of his eyes. Anger flashes through me as I realize what that means.

"No, you're just waiting for my _boyfriend_ to come down and do the dirty work for you." I hurl the word at him, like the weapon Damon thought it was when he used it on me at the dance.

Stefan swallows. "You're not crazy," he says in an even voice. "But you tried to kill your best friend. If we let you out of here, you'll do more things you'll eventually regret and I don't want that for you, Elena. It's no more than you would do for any of us."

"You want me to be _grateful _that you locked me in your dungeon? Really, Stefan?" I cock my head, anger flashing hot at the roots of my hair even though I expected this from him.

I knew they'd never let me live the Bonnie thing down, even though killing her makes perfect sense and stealing Caroline's dress was far more calculatedly cruel. Caroline cares a lot more about this dress than anybody cares about Bonnie these days.

I shake my head and roll onto my back, glaring up at the ceiling.

They're all focused on the cure, but it's Bonnie who's the problem. For as much as she's always going on about doing the right thing, she never does it. Left to her own devices, she'll drop the veil to the Other Side for sure. She couldn't even be bothered to ask Jeremy on a date, but now she's willing to bring about the end of the world just to have him back?

"Locking me up was the kindest thing you ever did for me," Stefan says softly. "The first time, I didn't want to live with what I'd done, and the second time, I just wanted to keep doing it and forget everything else. But you wouldn't let me. You never gave up on me. You never gave up on Damon either, even after I did."

I could argue, but I'm just too tired to care. He'll only hear what he wants to hear, no matter what I have to say. I should have left when I had the chance, but I thought it would be easier once I convinced everyone from my old life that they didn't want to come chasing after me.

Apparently I didn't try hard enough.

"I brought you some blood." He nudges the cup he set in the window. "If you want some food, I can get you something."

"And why is it you instead of my _boyfriend _bringing it down here?" I roll onto my side again, facing the door as I prop my head up on my hand, shaking my hair so it cascades down my arm.

Stefan's lips push together and he tips his head to the side like he's absorbing the impact of that word and shaking it off.

"Damon needs a break," Stefan says shortly.

I can still see the flash of desperation in his ice blue eyes as he cradled me against his chest, his hands gentle because I was already in so much pain. He didn't need a break when he thought I was dying.

"So much for killing me with kindness, huh?" I ask drolly. "It's not really his M.O., is it?"

Stefan looks away and for a moment, I think I've won.

"Having your emotions off doesn't make you cruel, Elena," he says evenly. "You didn't have to say the things you said to him."

"Is that really what you're upset about, Stefan? Or were you hoping that without the sire bond in the way, I'd be begging to be your little pet again?"

I slide off the bed, gliding toward the door until the only thing separating our lips is a few bare inches of musty air.

"Were you sad?" I purr. "When it turned out that I didn't want either of you?"

He shifts back from the bars, but he still doesn't retreat.

"Do you remember, Elena, why you wanted to save me when I was reveling in the blood high, the freedom of being Klaus's slave, forced to indulge all my darkest desires?"

He wants me to say that he wasn't himself, wasn't the person he was _supposed _to be. Stefan's big on who we're all _supposed _to be. It's who we are that he has trouble with.

I shrug. "Sure. I didn't want you killing all those people. But I don't know why, because it doesn't actually matter as much as I used to think. I mean, when I killed that waitress, what really changed? Nothing."

"Everything," he says, his fingers tightening on the bars. "For the people in her life. For everyone who knew her. God, how can you say that, Elena? When you're only like this because you can't face the pain of losing Jeremy. You know exactly how much death _matters_."

The tightness in my chest won't relent, scraping points of pressure all along the insides of my ribs like bony, phantom fingers. I wonder if I make myself throw up if it will rid me of the rest of Bonnie's poisoned blood.

He shakes his head, his eyes knowing and sad in a way that makes me want to slap him in his condescending face.

"I know what it's like, Elena. I know how good everything can feel, and how little that matters after the first few months. Having your emotions off is like being a toddler. Only the most basic forms of gratification and nothing to fill the space between but boredom."

I roll my eyes. "If I play dead like a possum, will you stop talking?"

Stefan keeps going as if I never interrupted. "You can't feel glad for another person or be moved by beauty, no matter how well-equipped your eyes may be to experience it. You can't be proud or impressed or awed or at peace. Without your emotions, you're incapable of understanding what it means to be alive."

"And you do?" I scoff.

I've seen the hope drain out of his eyes too many times to buy this speech coming from him.

"Sometimes, Elena. Sometimes I do," he says quietly.

I fight the urge to reach through the bars and claw at Stefan's face until he stops _looking_ at me with those eyes brimming with all the most pitiful of the human emotions.

As if watching him suffer would make me want to do it alongside him.

"Look," I tell him coldly. "_Enlightening _me, or whatever it is you think you're doing here, isn't going to put all your little Humpty Dumpties back together again. So don't pretend any of this is about me, when we both know the person you're trying to save is yourself."

He sighs. "Hey, it's been a long day. Why don't you get some sleep? Tomorrow is soon enough to deal with all this."

"You mean to deal with me."

He looks at me and his face so clearly says yes that I forget everything he just said. I'm so glad I don't have to feel it when he looks at me like that anymore.

Because it doesn't matter who I really am. The only thing that's going to erase the worry lines from between his eyebrows isn't for me to apologize, or be in love with him, or even to tear through a couple boxes of Kleenex sobbing for my poor, rotting brother. Those lines will smooth when I start doing exactly what he wants me to do.

And for all his talk of love, that isn't it.

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_Author's Note: If you'd like to read another story with a fantastic switched-off Elena and a Damon more amenable to that state of affairs, check out that-treason's new story "The Low Road."_


	2. All Of My Names

_Author's Note: Huge thanks to goldnox and latbfan for lending their considerable expertise to make this story far better than it otherwise would have been. _

**Chapter 2: All Of My Names**

**ELENA POV**

Damon's room is quiet, the polished expanse of the wood floor glowing golden-brown in the early morning sunlight. The long silk curtains billow and twist in the breeze that is drifting in the open windows.

The house is empty; the town is empty. Everyone has gone and it's a relief, like cool water pouring down my body, leaving nothing behind.

It's time for me to go too, but I'm still trying to pack. I'm rummaging through drawers in Damon's room but I can't find where I put my things, can't remember which drawers should have been mine. The peace of the still room gives way little by little as tension winds beneath my heart.

I stop trying to leave things neatly folded and yank them out of their drawers, dumping shirts and jeans out onto the floor. I recognize them as they tumble out like a parade of days: the black sweater he wore when Stefan tried to kill himself, when he told me his brother drank puppy blood. The grey Henley he wore when he showed me the way to a vampire's heart. The cobalt button-down he wore in Denver.

I slam the last drawer in the dresser and whirl around, my heart pounding. It's not here. I can't leave without it.

I reach for the drawer of the bedside table and realize my hands are bare. My daylight ring is missing, too. I flinch, looking toward the windows, but the curtains soften the sunlight. It can't hurt me here.

I sink down onto the foot of the bed, pressing my shaking hands against my thighs. I can't leave without my daylight ring, and somehow the knowledge calms me. I can't find what I need to take with me, anyway, so it doesn't matter so much if I have to stay.

I catch a flash of movement out of the corner of my eye and a small dog trots into the room. I smile, confused, as he sniffs my hand and moves on. It's my mother's ancient Schnauzer, Shotzi. He used to curl up on my lap when my mom would read me bedtime stories. I always told Mom he liked Dr. Seuss the best because his ears would perk up when her voice would trip and roll through the rhyming lines.

I watch him, vaguely bewildered though I can't remember why, while he moves around the room, sniffing the pieces of furniture. He stops again by my feet, panting slightly. His teeth are longer than I remember, sharper, and he bites the bedspread. I suck in a surprised breath.

He growls and backs up, the bedspread tearing and shredding apart, long lines of his saliva marking the smooth cloth.

"Stop it!" I jump to my feet, horrified.

He leaps up onto the bed and starts attacking the rest of the bedding, sheets and blankets ripping and bunching up under his dirty paws. I grab him and pull him off the bed and he disappears into my hands. I gag, watching the fur dissolve into my palms like a wound healing.

There's no time to be disgusted. If Damon comes home and sees this, he'll be upset. I yank the ruined bedding off and ball it up, shoving it far under the bed where he can't see.

I run to the closet and pull out a new sheet but it's marred by big greasy blotches, like motor oil.

I kick it under the bed and pick up the next set, but they're wet and dripping with blood. I gasp, clenching the fabric in shaking fists. Where it touched the mattress, there are damp crimson streaks.

My stomach clenches painfully tight and I wrap my arms around myself, turning in circles in the destroyed room. I don't know what he'll say, what he'll do. I don't want to see his face when he sees what I've done. I drop to my knees, half-intending to crawl under the bed with the ball of ruined sheets.

It's too late. I can already hear his footsteps.

But they're not coming closer. They're fading away. And somehow, there's no relief in knowing I won't be caught.

I open my eyes and breathe in Damon, but I'm not in his room and my sheets are spotless.

I liked his scent more than I wanted to admit as a human. As a vampire, it's something closer to an addiction. Even now, when all my reactions feel blunted and optional, his scent is a pleasure that lasts longer than the touch of good cloth or the buzz of the feed.

And it's filling up my cell.

When I sit up, I see a fresh basin of water steaming gently just inside the door, a clean washcloth folded over the side. Next to it is a glass of blood, probably still warm.

If all they give me is blood, they don't have to let me out to use the bathroom, but the idea of making do with a sponge-bath makes me want to scream with frustration. What exactly are the Salvatores punishing me for that they haven't done dozens of times themselves?

Still, they're not here to argue with, and my makeup feels stiff on my face. Shooting a dark look toward the stairs, I wash and dress in Caroline's clothes.

I know she was the one who picked them out because every single color makes me look like a cancer patient. They're too tight in the hips and chest and too loose in the waist so that I feel like I'm playing dress up.

When the door at the top of the stairs opens again, I wish I was still naked.

It would be better to be nude and myself, to meet the inevitable disgust and embarrassment in my visitor's face with confident indifference.

But it's too late now because quiet brown eyes appear through the bars and my heart gives one spastic kick against the cage of my ribs before I realize he isn't a ghost.

Elijah inclines his head slightly. "Hello, Elena. May I come in?"

"Sorry, this side seems to be missing a door handle. Guess you'll have to come back another time."

He opens the door and stands just inside. He studies me like he did when he realized I wasn't Katherine, as if there is something wrong with my face and he's trying to ferret out exactly where the defect lies.

I resist the urge to stand and instead, I lean back against the wall, burrowing my bare feet into the disarrayed bedding to see if I can make him squirm with the squalor of the little cell I've been assigned to. "I think they forgot they put me down here."

"The Salvatores are having a difficult time," Elijah says, "deciding precisely what they need to do to help you."

He tilts his head, still visually dissecting me.

"I offered my assistance, but now that I'm here, I confess I'm not certain exactly what I can do."

"Well, so far flirting, lecturing and distraction have made up the bulk of my finishing school curriculum. Judging by the accommodations, I think I'm in remedial classes now," I tell him, checking the damage to my manicure.

Elijah's phone buzzes in his pocket, but he ignores it. Instead, he walks to the far wall, studying it absently. I could run. With his back turned, I might make it to the open door.

But he's too fast for me to make it out of the basement. I sling a wrist over my crooked knee, keeping my other leg folded underneath me to hide the poor fit of my jeans.

Elijah raises a hand and brushes the old bricks with just the tips of his second and third fingers, and I remember that he's spent time in this cell too.

"What is it that you want, Elena?"

I listen to the way he says my name. Everyone pronounces it differently.

Matt quickly and offhandedly because he's said it so many times he doesn't even hear it anymore.

Caroline with a hint of a whine as if she's trying to get me to agree to something.

Stefan with a whisper of pain I've never understood.

Of all of them, I like Damon and Elijah's version the best.

Damon's can be playful or angry or sexy, but in his mouth, the letters always sound beautiful.

And on Elijah's tongue, my syllables come out silkily, like something exotic and expensive and rare. He says my name with a respect that embarrassed me as a human, because I'd done nothing to earn it.

Now, it's just irritating that he thinks he knows me well enough to visit me in a cell and tell me how to live my life.

"Isn't it obvious?" I ask in return, my tone as sharp as my fangs are itching to be. "I want to be left alone so I can go where I want and live as I choose."

He turns back, his brow creased slightly.

"I assure you, Elena, had you ever actually _been_ alone, you would realize it is not a state you would eagerly return to."

I've never been able to picture how Elijah lives when he's not in Mystic Falls. He probably goes and sits in a straight-backed chair in a very clean room. Like a suit on a hanger, just waiting to be taken out again when it is needed. Somehow I can't imagine him lonely.

"Why did you ask if you were just going to tell me what I wanted?" I roll my eyes. "It's not my humanity that all of you miss. It's the girl you could order around."

He smiles. "I don't recall you taking orders particularly well."

"Right." His smile makes my toes curl irritably and I roll to my feet and stalk across the room to him. "You miss my _compassion._"

He doesn't react, not a twitch of a single muscle in his face. He looks…calm.

It's funny that he thinks being calm is superior to being without feelings.

"Do you know what compassion is, Elijah?" When I'm close enough to smell his understated cologne, I stop and lift my chin. "It's living with your own pain and everyone else's too."

I laugh but my throat is too dry for it to sound the way it should. "And I can see why everyone else misses that, but guess what? I don't."

He nods. "That is your choice, of course."

I raise an eyebrow. "Really? Does that mean you're going to let me out of high-security daycare, then?"

"Not today. My apologies." He bows his head and turns away, retrieving a large shopping bag from just outside the door. "I wish you could understand what it's like to watch everyone around you repeat the same mistakes. If you could just take a moment to reflect, you could save decades—" he pauses and clears his throat.

"But that's also your choice. All I ask, all _we_ ask, is that you consider it for a day or two beyond the madness of this fight over the cure and Silas."

I fold my arms. "Really? Because I've already been down here for a day, and I'm no closer to signing on the dotted line for the Salvatores to run my life."

He doesn't respond, and his utter stillness makes it easy to remember he's been alive longer than most trees.

I refuse to be the first to look away. In my old life, I would have been uncomfortable, apologetic, but now I don't have to shrink from a pair of sad brown eyes.

It was the last favor Damon did for me, and I never even thanked him for it.

Finally, he offers me the shopping bag. "Rebekah sent some clothes you bought together in New York."

I take the bag. "Poor apology for not springing me from jail."

He smiles slightly. "There's a certain amount of irony in your friendship with my sister. She's been a vampire for a thousand years, and all she wants is for a single person to truly love her. You're just starting out, and you're trying your best to make everyone in your life hate you."

"I don't have to try very hard for that," I tell him, turning my back and beginning to sort clothes from the bag onto my bed.

"You're mistaken, you know. It's not love, or even companionship. I've been lonely in the company of my family, more times than I'd care to consider."

I pause and examine a red skirt, plucking a stray thread from the hem.

"But there is an alchemy when two people truly connect, and it is something not found anywhere else on earth," Elijah says quietly. "I've never found a word for it in any language, but it exists nonetheless and without it, you wither. Like my sister. Like my brother."

"Like you," I challenge, turning back to face him. "Of your family, you're the only one desperate enough to date a five-hundred-year old Venus Fly Trap without a single redeeming quality."

His jaw flexes once but through the bars, his eyes are still sad.

"You know, I wouldn't have thought it possible but right now, you put me in mind of Niklaus. Exploding in every direction, in every possible medium, trying to escape living as yourself with the weight of your own history. You might consider that in ten centuries he has had little success, and no peace."

He doesn't leave the door open when he goes, for all his talk of choices.

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_Author's Note: If Season 4 leaves you needing a good laugh, check out goldnox's new one shot "Princess Elena: A Fairy Tale (Of Sorts)" It's a fairy tale spoof on the entirety of TVD with sidebars from a dangerously hilarious narrator. Check it out, promise it will leave you teary eyed, gasping for air, and grinning like a fool. _


	3. Mirror Mirror On the Wall

_Author's Note: This story was written before "She's Come Undone" aired, any similarities are coincidental. This story can be read as a companion piece to my one shot "Pain Like a River" that also deals with switched-off Elena and Damon's attempts to take care of her. A moment from that story is referenced in this chapter, as well. _

_All the karma points to goldnox and latbfan because to write is human, to beta is divine. They both have on-going stories right now, if you want to check out some of the best writing in the TVD fandom._

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**Chapter 3: Mirror, Mirror On the Wall**

**ELENA POV**

I can hear his footsteps on the wooden floors above my cell.

They've had so many visitors lately that I can't always tell who is who but even though Stefan and Damon both wear the same motorcycle boots, they sound completely different. Stefan's steps are heavier than they should be for his size, but the rhythm is always the same.

Damon has two walks: a long-legged swagger that tells me he's not alone, and the touch of rubber to wood that is solid but almost completely silent for when there is no one to hear.

It's more an instinct than a sound, and it is the heartbeat of his haunting of me.

I haven't seen his face since I collapsed in his arms three days ago but he's all around me.

He's the cup of blood that waits beside me when I wake up.

He's my phone on top of the pile of borrowed clothes. The stone walls ruin the signal, but it's loaded with games I used to play in between classes and pictures that I never look at anymore. His name is tauntingly entered on the top three high scores on Angry Birds. So far I've only been able to knock the lowest one out of the running, but it's passed a lot of the excruciatingly silent hours down here already.

He's the old hoodie of Stefan's that I used to wear when I stayed the night. He could have left one of his leather jackets; they're warmer and I like the way they smell, but of course he wouldn't.

I don't think Stefan knew he took it, because Stefan left me a sweater of Caroline's instead: soft blue with tiny useless pockets and a knit too loose to provide any protection from the basement chill. I could still smell him in the yarn when I unfolded it.

The hoodie is warmer, and Damon's been perversely worried about me getting cold ever since I transitioned. It never seemed to bother him when I was a human but after I came home from the morgue, there was an electric blanket on my bed, a thick Burberry coat in my closet and a lighter jacket with a soft lining for spring and fall.

Sometimes I catch his fingers skimming across my palm as if checking to see if the chill is too much, even though we're exactly the same temperature.

He put this bed together, with his own sheets folded to fit the smaller bed and the wine-colored merino wool blanket from his room that I always wrapped myself up in when I stayed up late to read.

Looking at the blanket made my skin feel like it didn't fit quite right, so I folded it up and stowed it in the shopping bag Elijah brought.

Damon has the house to himself right now, and he's pacing in the spare bedroom above me so quietly that I wouldn't hear him if I had anything at all to distract me.

Of everyone, I knew Damon would be the hardest to get rid of. I just can't decide if the fact that he can't abide the sight of me means that my little speech at prom was a success or a failure.

Probably both, since he hasn't let me out yet.

I know what I need to do to win my freedom. It's a simple enough act to cry and apologize, and wail my brother's abandoned name.

But I can't seem to remember how to produce a tear, and I don't want to. I'd rather rot in this basement than play the poor little orphan girl they want me to be.

I smelled Jeremy's hair catch on fire that night. They think I have forgotten, but I haven't. There's just no point in talking about it.

Tousled black hair smells the same as brown when it burns. It's not a scent you can stand twice in one life.

And I will never attend another funeral again, no matter how long I live.

They think I'm cruel, but I've never been able to think as clearly as I do now. It's so easy to see what needs to be done. There are very few people left of the crowd that used to keep me tethered to this life. Once Damon, Stefan and Caroline give up on me, I can kill Bonnie on my way out of town so she can't drop the veil to the Other Side and free everyone who has ever had the power to hurt me.

And then I'll be free.

The problem is that once I look beyond that, I see nothing.

Damon's footsteps falter, and then I hear the doorbell. His boots awaken back into sound as he strides towards the door. I have to really focus to hear the voices when he opens the door, and I can't make out all the words, but the acid in Damon's tone is easy enough to interpret.

Two sets of feet descend the basement stairs, heels snapping against floorboards as Italian loafers lead the way in a measured rhythm. Boots wait silently in the room above.

"Last I checked it wasn't two for one day at the zoo," I tell Elijah. "And I've had enough visitors lately."

He was my last visitor. But one was enough.

"Oh, I think you'll want to see me." His companion steps around him, but I already know who it will be. Her smile is outlined in vicious red, and perfect ringlet curls spill over the draped shoulder of her designer top.

I shrug. "Nope. Sorry. You don't have anything I'm not already bored to tears of."

Elijah opens the door and Katherine slinks past him as if she brought him along just so she wouldn't have to touch the old iron of the door handle with her freshly manicured nails.

"A bed?" She clicks her tongue. "That's more than they gave me. Although I hear if you perform the right services for your jailer, you get special treatment."

Elijah raises his chin an inch and she pouts. "Aww, can't I have a little fun along with my charity mission?"

He smiles almost gently, and they share a look that makes the back of my throat ache. I cough to get rid of the sensation, and Katherine waves a hand.

"Run along then. Let us girls have a little chat."

He nods and only because I'm watching very carefully do I see their hands touch before he closes the door behind him.

He doesn't close the bolt.

"Any chance of a jailbreak?" I ask idly.

I wonder if I can snap her neck if I catch her by surprise.

She puts a finger across her lips and smiles mischievously as she crosses the room to me. I sit up, curious despite myself.

Katherine bends down and slaps me across the face.

I tumble off of the bed, smacking my elbow on the frame and scraping the heel of my hand on the floor.

"That's for stealing my shoes, and for kissing my man," she says.

I pick myself up off the floor, moving shakily and cupping my injured cheek in my hand.

Katherine's right shoe, a red stiletto with crisscrossed laces reminiscent of lingerie, taps the floor with smug impatience as she waits for me to recover.

I shake my hair out of my eyes and give her a sullen look. She opens her mouth and that's when I hit her, a backhand with a closed fist that drives my knuckles into her face.

I hear a crack as she stumbles backwards, and when I see that her cheekbone broke instead of her heel, I can't decide if it's a victory or a loss. My doppelganger has a serious shoe fetish.

"That's for my brother," I tell her, heat streaking through my fingers as I wait to see if she wants a fight.

The last time I saw her, it was like reading a Wikipedia entry. Bitch comma Brother Killer, typed out in nondescript black and white. This time all the letters are red, and every line of her face is an insult to me.

"Mmm, something about the prison diet not sitting well with you?" she taunts as her cheekbone heals back into unblemished perfection. "You're touchy today. Stupid, considering your little blonde bodyguard isn't here."

I laugh. "Like you can do anything to me without offending your boytoy waiting upstairs. Careful, Katherine. He can hear you, which means he can hear you _not _doing whatever he talked you into coming for."

"Elijah knows exactly what I'm here for," she says. "And he trusts me to do it right."

"He's an idiot if he thinks you're doing anything except what's in your best interest." I raise my eyebrows. "Which I guess includes him."

Katherine's eyes gleam secretively. "It's cute how you think you know me."

I dust off my new skirt, examining it for rips. "You're supposed to be here to help and the first thing you did was slap me hard enough to fuse my jaw bones, so I guess I'm not too far off the mark."

"I don't like you," Katherine says, with the slightest hint of a curl to her full upper lip. "That hasn't changed."

"Well, good, visiting hours are over anyway. Unless you want to pull the twin switch," I wave a hand invitingly at the bed. "Being me would be the safest you'd ever been from Klaus' hit list. And you've had so much fun playing me in the past."

"It's getting easier all the time. We have _so _much in common these days," Katherine purrs.

"I suppose you would be shallow enough to think so," I say dismissively, turning away to smooth the blankets on my bed. There's something about her face that makes the quiet inside of me feel like the pause before the horror-movie soundtrack starts.

"Let's see, dead family, smitten pair of brothers you desperately want to ditch, doesn't play nicely with others…" she shrugs. "Yeah, what would I know? I'll tell you one thing, though. I would have found Silas another snack if I'd realized it was going to net me a Mini-Me."

The skin on my cheekbones goes cold, as if the veins that tickle my lower eyelashes are flash-freezing the sockets of my eyes. I know she's trying to goad me; there's no other reason for Elijah to bring her here. But that thought gets lost as my vision wavers, caught like my teeth between two different species as I struggle to conceal my reaction.

"Don't flatter yourself," I grit out. "There's nothing on earth that can make me anything like you."

She nods, pursing her lips in a mockery of earnestness. "Of course you're right. I'm the evil, brother-killing twin, right?" Her heels click teasingly as she crosses to examine my discarded prom dress.

"Stefan told me about that waitress," she says, letting the crumpled fabric fall dismissively from her fingers as she peeks over her shoulder at me. "Her bad luck. She'd only been back to work for a week. She had two brothers, you know, but only one kidney." Katherine smiles conspiratorially. "I'd bet the oldest one is relieved that you waited until after the surgery to cut off his source."

I have to fight not to roll my eyes. A kidney donor? If a girl who turned an entire town into her personal juicebox wanted to guilt trip me about who I'd killed, she ought to have come up with a less transparent ploy.

"What?" I ask, smiling sharply. "Was she one of your compelled little playmates?"

I don't understand why everyone thinks that turning off my humanity damaged my brain. Though it's irrelevant, I'm perfectly aware that the waitress was a person with a life and parents and a shitty job and probably a sibling or two. I didn't notice if she had a wedding ring, but when I grabbed her wrist there was a tattoo peeking out from under a wide bracelet.

Which means that there's probably someone who knows what the tattoo on her now-rotting wrist meant to her.

I blink and realize I didn't register Katherine's retort, and to cover my inattention I give my doppelganger a contemptuous look. "The vampire version of the pork chop trick…so classy. You'll note I haven't had to compel myself a friend yet."

I feel odd, my mind returning unbidden to the image of the dead girl's tattoo. Only one curve had been visible. It could have been a butterfly, or a Chinese character, a zodiac sign.

Or a name.

My chest trembles as if my lungs have come suddenly to life and I struggle to stay still so Katherine won't notice. I focus on the facets of the rubies in her earrings and the shine of each flat surface reminds me that nothing she says can touch me.

"Nope, your friends locked you up instead." Her smile turns sympathetic. "I hate it when they do that."

"They locked you up because you were a vicious, selfish bitch," I hiss at her. "They locked _me_ up because I tried to save us all from the Night of the Walking Dead. So I'm sorry if I fail to see the similarity in our situations."

"Oh don't you?" she looks amused. "Well, maybe if you have a little longer to think about it, you'll start to get the joke. And look at that." She playfully flicks a lock of my candy-striped hair. I slap her hand away and she laughs. "The hair is even starting to curl."

I know my hair looks great, or at least it did before my three days in a bathroom-less basement. Her insult strangely sooths the ache in my fangs and I fold my arms and raise a pitying eyebrow.

"I know this is a hard one for you to swallow, Katherine, but not everything is about you."

"Sure." She smiles like she's just scented blood and flips her hair over her shoulder as she reaches for the door. "Just do me a favor. When you have to fake your own death to get rid of them, just don't use the burning church trick. It's so cliché."

I listen to her retreat up the stairs and I don't think. Instead, I tug at the hem of my skirt with fingers that feel like they're made of glass.

The skirt is cute, but not really the best thing for lounging around in dungeons.

I want my favorite plum-colored Henley. Damon bought it for me to replace one that got blood on it and I don't know where he found it, because it was about eight times softer than anything else I owned, the fabric more delicate than the best of my lingerie. It was tight but the buttons never strained and it sat just right on my hips and I burned it along with my brother and Jenna's shoe collection that I had just started borrowing and my birth certificate and a hundred other things that are going to be annoying as hell to replace.

The door to the basement claps closed behind Katherine and I hear her say, "You're welcome."

No one responds, and her heels click all the way to the front door with the murmur of Elijah's expensive loafers following calmly in her wake.

I try to keep my mind blank, but you can't un-think what you already know and there's nothing loud enough in this tiny, empty room to drown out the fact that she's right.

We're clones, closer than identical twins. The only reason we're not the same person is because our lives were different. But when I lost my family, I was going to do exactly what she did: cut all ties and run away from everything that could be used against me. Everything that makes me who I am instead of who she is.

The quavering material of my skirt tickles my thighs; my fingers are clenched on the hem and no matter how tightly I hold on, I still shake.

This shouldn't be happening. I'm supposed to be safe from this.

When Jeremy died, I promised myself I wouldn't have to feel anything ever again.

But everything inside of my skin that was silent is starting to echo.

And I know that he's gone.

My family. Every person who raised me, knew what I looked like every day of my life. I'm the only one left.

There's something in my throat like witch's blood, like panic, like the fact that I'm nothing, nothing, nothing that anyone who loved me would want anymore.

The bed catches me when I start to sink and my toes curl, clenching like every muscle and tendon I have and one of my sandals falls to the gritty floor. They put me down here because they couldn't throw me away, but they know that's where I belong now.

They tried. The memories come rushing back as if I've only now woken up, hungover and aching with the shame of everything I wish I hadn't done.

They tried to love me like this.

Stefan swayed with me like he has at every cursed dance we've ever been to, his hand awkward but safe against the tiny zippers at the backs of each of my dresses.

Caroline complimented my eyes, her teeth clenched against my deliberate betrayal.

Damon.

_Damon. _

When I tossed my newly streaked hair, his eyes glowed like I was the first beautiful thing he'd ever seen, but how could he have seen anything but Katherine; curls and an empty smile to pass the time until he'd served his purpose?

He tried to make love to me when I was fucking him.

I lurch off the bed toward the basin of water I used to bathe this morning. I lean over it, retching uselessly because all I've been consuming is blood and there's nothing inside of me.

I touched him like he was nothing, like one of those girls he used to pick up at bars who didn't know the first thing about him.

My stomach convulses so hard that my knee jerks against the hard floor, scraping a bloody streak that heals before it's stopped hurting.

For long moments, all I can do is choke and dry heave and it's almost a relief to feel the pain everywhere.

When it stops, I slump to the floor because the bed is too far away and I don't deserve its comfort.

This whole time, I've known Jeremy was dead, but now my bones reverberate with the knowledge of what that means, of what every morning will hold after this one.

I can't move, because as soon as I do, I'll have to decide what shape I make in a world without my family. What I should do with my hands, my feet.

And I just don't know.

So I don't move.

There's no sunlight down here, and no sound to tell me how much time is passed. I have as long as I need, so long that it means nothing.

So long that I realize that I'm already doing it, that I've already done it.

And it looks like lying curled on a dirty cell floor in a skirt that I stole and hate, with no one to see the goosebumps that mar the naked skin of my arms and legs.

And that is how I learn to live without my brother.

* * *

_Author's Note: If you haven't yet, you should all check out that-treason's new fic "the low road" because she's writing the switched-off Elena story that I was really hoping TVD would tell us in Season 4. Brilliant writing, and the kind of story you can't look away from. _


	4. Rain of Silence

_Author's Note: Worlds of gratitude to goldnox and latbfan for some seriously talented betaing. You should all check out the wonderful Season 4 fics they have going. _

**Chapter 4: Rain of Silence**

**DAMON POV**

It's raining, the howling kind that rakes capillary lines down the windowpanes until the layer between you and the ferocity of the world looks like the nothing that it really is.

It reminds me of nights of mud and soggy wool and strangers' bodies too close to mine, huddled under waxed canvas tarps that always leaked. Nights when I was still human and the cold felt like a warning scraping my bones, whispering that I might not last until sunrise and if I didn't, nothing in the wind or the water would blink or care or even pause.

Tonight, my ears are full of the sound that used to fill the underside of those musty tarps. Liquid, dripping chill and the silence of a despair that hasn't quite melted into tears but sticks in your gut and your throat; its frozen, ragged edges impossible to dislodge.

It's the sound of the cell that cages the girl I love. With my back to the door and my eyes closed, it's impossible to tell which side of the lock I'm on.

I've been on both sides so many times.

I can't stand to look at her through the bars, so I don't come down here until she's asleep. Then I can come in, to leave her water and blood and listen to her breathe, to know that whatever else has happened, she hasn't left me yet.

Tonight, she's awake.

I haven't seen her eyes since the prom, but when she started to gag and choke I was down the stairs before my brain could kick my ass back onto the tough love bandwagon.

Katherine Pierce is a bitch.

But she's also a world-class manipulator, and one of the only people who has provoked a genuine reaction from Elena since her brother's death.

Every day, I catch my brother's green eyes flinching away from me when I look up, and I know he's waiting for me to come up with a better plan than the one he suggested. And God forgive me, I have no fucking idea what to do. So I let the crown jewel of our fucked-up past into the basement to see if she can un-fuck our future.

I should have left, but instead I waited at the top of the stairs with Elijah while neither of us bothered to pretend we weren't listening.

I didn't look at him, so I don't know if he could hear the ache underneath Katherine's deadly cocktail of truths and lies. He's known her longer than I have, but not half so well.

So maybe he wouldn't recognize that neither the hatred nor the sympathy in Katherine's weapon of a voice were for Elena.

When Katherine stalked back up the stairs with a bitter smile playing around her lips, her eyes were older than they've ever looked. And when she said, "You're welcome," there was a moment, one fucking kid-with-a-new-pony moment where I thought she might have pulled it off.

And then the sound of vomiting clawed its way up the stairs and I flew down them, my hand on the bolt before I looked through the bars and saw her.

Elena was bent over a basin of water, but even in the midst of dry-heaves there was something about the curve of her neck and trembling spine that bespoke the kind of suffering that doesn't come from poison. It took me three breaths, then four, and halfway through five before I could pry my fingers off the latch.

I've replayed that moment in her lighter-fluid-soaked house enough times to know what I should have done when she fell.

I should have hit my knees beside her and wrapped her in my useless arms and kept my fucking mouth firmly shut. Nothing and no one can take away the pain of a brother lost. They can only twist it into something it never should have been.

And so that's what I do now. I drop to my knees and if I remembered how to pray, I would. Instead I let the wordless howl inside my head spin itself out in tangled threads of hope and despair until I slump against the door and I remind my lungs not to move so the sound won't give me away.

This time, I have to trust her to face it alone.

I wait with her.

I don't know, on either side of the door, if we know what we're waiting for. If there will actually be something on the other side of where we've been.

But just in case, we wait.


	5. Welcome Home

_Author's Note: ****__This story was written before "She's Come Undone" aired, any similarities are coincidental. _

_Cyber flowers and chocolate and topless, very fit male dancers to goldnox and latbfan for being ridiculously awesome at betaing._

* * *

**Chapter 5: Welcome Home**

**ELENA POV**

The sheets beneath me are kind to my aching body: not the near-unbearable delight of sensation without any emotion to detract from it, but instead the comforting slide of expensive fabric purchased by a man who cared what it felt like against my skin.

They're not white.

When he came into my cell and gathered me up, the only thing I could think to do was exhale. Though I was awake, my brain seems to have sifted past the moments when he carried me upstairs, and perhaps a lot more because my hands are clean and my hair is soft and still just a little bit damp where it lays against my neck.

I'm not sure yet if I'm naked, and it doesn't matter.

What matters is the sheets are a luxurious dove gray and the bed is big enough to hold the man whose chest pillows my cheek.

He's naked.

For me he's always naked, always beautiful, and when a tear slips from the corner of my eye onto his chest, he doesn't comment. Perhaps it's not the first.

"Damon?"

He flinches at the sound of his name.

His hand cups the back of my head briefly, the pad of his thumb pressing a little too hard above my ear before his touch disappears.

"I'm here."

There's the barest hint of resignation in his tone, like a question.

I don't know how to ask him if he wants to be.

I duck my head and press my lips to him. He stills under my kiss, his breath pausing as if to lengthen the moment. I slide my cheek up the tiny swells of his ribs and bury my face in his neck, his collarbone pressing a hard and graceful line into my jaw as I inhale even though he hasn't.

His scent fills me and because I may have nothing left to lose, I let my voice carry my thoughts.

"That's how I should have touched you."

When I lift my head, his eyes are the color of the morning sky and they gleam in a way he never lets anyone see but me.

I have to brace myself on an elbow as the air in my lungs tries to change shape too quickly, the relief whipping through my body at a speed that leaves my thoughts marooned somewhere behind it.

He blinks and his lips curve, and I realize that some parts of my new life still look like my old one.

I drop back onto his chest and squeeze my arms around him, giddy with my strength and his scent and something, everything, familiar.

"And we're right back to the breaking of bones." He coughs as if I'm crushing him. "Didn't take you long."

My head lifts, stricken. "Damon, I'm-"

His finger settles across my lips and he shakes his head.

"Uh-uh. Don't start with the apologizing. It's so fucking tedious. Besides, it's not the first time you've had my neck snapped because I was trying to keep you from doing something stupid."

I take a breath and he presses harder.

"Or the first time you've told me you hated me." He grins and leans close so his sing-sing whisper lands right in my ear. "Even though you were lyyy-ing."

I smile at him, though my chest still feels like it has a giant foot planted in its center.

"As long as you always know the truth."

His eyes flare fractionally like a glitch before his sexy smile settles back into place. "Damn straight."

I bend to his lips, the kiss melting my belly against his as I realize we're both naked.

He groans, a tiny sound deep in his throat as I pull away. I don't protest when his arms shepherd me into place, curled on top of him with my hands pressed safely between us, my temple against the hollow in his throat.

My body sinks, relaxing despite the darkness that still coils and billows deep in my belly.

"Easy sweetheart," Damon whispers, as if he can hear it. "It's better now."

I laugh, the sound catching behind my tongue until it's nearly a sob. "Not really. My brother's gone, I made all my friends hate me and-"

He cuts me off before I even get to the end of my litany of worries.

"No one hates you. Stefan's been a little bitch for way too many years to hold a slip or two against anyone else."

I bite my lip because I know Stefan, and I know how he looked at me even before I'd killed anyone. But I don't tell Damon because I don't want him to be angry with his brother. And Stefan has a reason to look at me that way now.

"Maybe, but Caroline doesn't know that I wasn't really going to kill her and even if she did?" I shake my head. "She won't forgive me for stealing her perfect prom dress."

"Actually, she probably will because Klaus gave her a dress with a price tag like a Maserati. Aaaand," he adds, sounding pleased with himself. "I told her that she had the best dress at the dance. Blondie knows me well enough to know I didn't say it to be nice."

"You think she'll believe you?" I ask wistfully. Caroline's been talking about her prom dress since we were picking out our Barbies' clothes but not our own. I chose the perfect ploy to get her to wash her hands of me.

"It was the truth." He kisses the top of my head. "Notice I didn't tell her she looked the hottest. And I think she's pretty clear on your homicidal fake-out. You held the stake up in the air for like two full minutes before I tackled you. No one for three counties around was convinced that you were actually going to stick her with that twig."

"But I really was going to kill Bonnie." I whisper the words into his neck, because I don't want to hear how they sound aloud.

"I know," he says. "I'm a little surprised you beat me to it, actually."

"It's not funny, Damon!"

"Elena, morality is an _emotion. _I sort of erased yours. What did you expect you'd be doing except eating people?"

I push myself up on my elbows so I can see his eyes, which are not nearly so matter-of-fact as his voice.

"I turned off my humanity, Damon. Not you. Bonnie, the waitress, what I did to you in New York-" I stop myself, because the list is long and for this second, at least this one second, it's not the most important thing. "Nothing I did is your fault."

"Remember that pesky little sire bond that was ruining our lives before Silas was around to do it?" he asks, his body tightening restlessly beneath me. "Yeah, it kind of makes my suggestion more of a mind-fuck."

I'm already shaking my head. "I know what the sire bond feels like, Damon. When you told me to leave the lake house, I didn't want to go and I had to anyway. But when you told me I could stop feeling, I _wanted _to. As soon as I thought of it, I did it. That wasn't the sire bond." It was me, being weak. I couldn't bear it and because I took the easy out, everyone I loved had to suffer instead of me. It seems like no matter what I do, that's the way it always turns out.

"None of this is your fault," I tell him.

Damon looks unconvinced, but at least for now, he doesn't argue.

"And Silas." I'm so tired, so so tired. "What are we going to do about Silas?"

"Actually," Damon says cheerfully. "I took care of that yesterday."

I sit up so fast I tip off his chest and end up lying on my side next to him. "What? How?"

"It's kind of a long story. Maybe you should hear it from Bonnie." He tucks a strand of my damp hair behind my ear. "After a nap, a cocktail and square meal or three."

I just look at him.

"Or now," he says with a shrug. "Short version: Bonnie asked me to make her a vampire, and I did."

"What!"

Damon winces. "Easy on the ears, sweetheart."

"But Bonnie would never, I mean, she hates vampires!" I sputter.

Damon smiles oddly. "Your brother can be very convincing, apparently."

My fingertips go cold and begin to tingle. "My brother?" I manage in a voice strangled of breath.

Damon tucks his hands behind his head and reclines against the pillows. "Judgy claims that the late Gilbert came to her in a dream to convince her not to help Silas."

"Like a dream or like a witch dream?" I ask skeptically.

"Real Ghost-Jeremy dream, according to the Queen of the Weird," Damon tells me, his voice carefully casual. "He said he's happy, hanging out with Ric and Jenna a lot. Says he has more family on the Other Side than he has here." I try not to flinch at the truth of that, keeping my eyes steady on Damon so he'll continue.

"Ghosty-Jer asked her to take care of you for him. He told her if she was a vampire, the Bennett line would end so the Other Side couldn't be destroyed, no one could use her for her power ever again, and she'd be around to look out for you."

I struggle to pull words from the whirl inside my head. "But even if he convinced her, why would she ask _you _of all people?"

His eyes flick away for just long enough to tell me the answer isn't something he's comfortable saying aloud.

"She thought if she turned with my blood, you guys would pretty much be family," he says with a sardonic smirk.

My hand flutters toward my throat.

He grins. "Plus, no chance of a sire bond."

I laugh, more from the relief of tension than from amusement.

"So she—" I can't finish.

"Yeah, considering she's squirreled away with the complete Virtuous Vamps Motivational Speaking team and a picnic cooler of blood bags, I'd say she's forgiven you."

I roll onto my back and look up at his ceiling: soothingly, uncomplicatedly white.

"So that's it? Silas can't drop the veil to the other side because no one else is a direct descendant of Qetsiyah, Bonnie and Stefan and maybe even Caroline are still speaking to me and you…" I trail off, not quite able to muster the courage to ask.

He shifts onto his side and tips my chin toward him. His eyes are light and steady and when I look into them, I almost catch a glimpse of the girl I might be now.

After.

And before.

"Me." He responds in a low voice, and something in my chest settles and eases.

The front door slams and hurried footsteps enter.

"Don't get too comfy yet," he tells me. "It royally pissed off Silas when I turned Bonnie, so we've got to find another way to kill him other than curing him of immortality, because he's hidden the cure now that he knows he can't use it to get back to his old flame. And until we figure it out, we've got the world's oldest, most dangerous creature breathing down our necks."

"_Damon?" _someone calls from downstairs.

Strangely, I'm not frightened. Maybe it's because I'm a vampire and not so delicate as I once was. Maybe it's because Damon's here and there's nothing this earth can create that he couldn't kill if it threatened his family.

Or maybe it's because this all seems a little too familiar.

I shrug one bare shoulder. "Sounds like Mystic Falls."

Damon smiles, and it's beautiful and dangerous and just a little bit embarrassed. "Sounds like home."

* * *

The End

* * *

_Author's Note: Thanks for sticking around through all the darkness of this story, and special love for all of you kind souls who went the extra mile to review, favorite and follow! And since the story is over, here are some other things you can read:_

_If you're hating Season 4, try out my full length re-write of the season, "Desperate Love"_

_If you're needing something to cheer you up, try "Happily Ever After: Salvatore Style":_ _A cute and funny peek into the boarding house, where Damon/Elena and Caroline/Stefan are living happily ever after, with some inevitable friction between couples. Sweet Delena moments with lots of laughter in between when Caroline and Damon devolve into a pranking war. Fluff that is guaranteed to brighten your day!_

_OR "Princess Elena: A Fairy Tale (Of Sorts)" a parody of TVD by the deviously brilliant Goldnox_

_And if you'd like something that's not fanfiction, check out my first published novel, a YA survival/romance. You can find it on my website at michellehazenbooks dot com /books/_


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